by Davis W. Huckabee
Chapter 1
EVE—THE MOTHER OF ALL LIVING
“And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living,” (Gen. 3:20). This is the first of only four references by name to Eve in Scripture, nor are there many other references to her in Scripture in other ways. Yet she was and is a most important personage, although many people thoroughly misunderstand her role in original sin, and many are quick to attribute all the evil in the world to her instrumen¬tality. But this idea is almost wholly the result of masculine pride, as we will see. This title seems almost contradictory of the facts, for death had been threatened for the eating of the forbidden fruit, (Gen. 2:16-17), which she had been deceived into partaking of by the serpent, (Gen. 3: 1 ff). But now, instead of being known as the Dead One, she is known as the mother of all the living. This will be resolved later.
The word signifies either living or, the giver or preserver of life. Though for her sin justly sentenced to a present death, yet by God’s infinite mercy, and by virtue of the promised Seed, she was both continued in life herself, and was made the mother of all living men and women that should be after her upon the earth; who though in and with their mother they were condemned to speedy death, yet shall be brought forth into the state and land of the living, and into the hopes of a blessed and eternal life by the Redeemer, whose mother or progenitor she was.—Matthew Poole, Commentary on the Holy Bible, in loco.
As the marginal reading shows, “Eve” translates the Hebrew Chavah from the common Hebrew word chai, to live. For as Adam was the natural head of all mankind, so Eve is the natural mother of all mankind, for from this original pair has come all of mankind that has ever been born since then. This is contrary to the modern theory of evolution, which is, and always has been since its conception, an endeavor to get rid of the problem of God. For God is a tremendous problem to every unconverted person. And they will all generally grasp at any straw, however frail or false or foolish to keep from having to acknowledge that God exists and that they must one day stand before Him and be judged by Him for all their rebellious actions. This is the whole basis of the theory of evolution, for there are no real facts to substantiate it.
However it must be recognized that in their sins there was a radical difference between Adam and Eve. Eve sinned only as an individual, and her sin affected no one but herself, while Adam sinned as the representative and natural head of the whole race, his sin making sinners of all his descendents to the end of time. ‘Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,” (Rom. 5:12). God had made a covenant with Adam that had to do with all his descendents, and he violated this covenant, as is declared in Hosea 6:7. ‘But they like men (Hebrew Adam) have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me.” This same truth was spoken in Job 31:33. Here is the only explanation for the curse that befalls every son of Adam in due time.
The Divine record of the Fall is the only possible explanation of the present condition of the human race. It alone accounts for the presence of evil in a world made by a beneficent and perfect Creator. It affords the only adequate explanation for the universality of sin. Why is it that the king’s son in the palace, and the saint’s daughter in the cottage, in spite of every safeguard which human love and watchfulness can devise, manifest from their earliest days an unmistakable bias toward evil and tendency to sin? Why is that sin is universal, that there is no empire, no nation, no family free from this awful disease? Reject the Divine explanation and no satisfactory answer is possible to these questions. Accept it, and we see that sin is universal because all share a common ancestry, all spring from a common stock, “In Adam all die.” The Divine record of the Fall alone explains the mystery of death. Man possesses an imperishable soul, why then should he die? He had breathed into him the breath of the Eternal One, why then should he not live on in this world forever? Reject the Divine explanation and we face an insoluble enigma. Accept it, receive the fact that, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12), and we have an explanation which meets all the facts of the case.—A. W. Pink, Gleanings In Genesis, p. 35.
This was the old covenant of works that said, in essence, Behave and you will be blessed, but disobey and you will be under the curse of the broken Law, as in Galatians 3:10. Now no one ever has or ever will keep this covenant so as to be entitled to enter into heaven. Our Lord Himself made this certain when He said in Matthew 19:17 that God alone is good. So, as Scripture says in Proverbs 28:26, he is a fool that trusts in his own heart, for thereby he makes an idol out of his own supposed self-sufficiency. But Eve had no part in this covenant except as any other natural person has because she was taken out of Adam just as every one of us has descended from him. Nor can she be blamed for leading Adam to sin, for as Scripture so clearly shows, he was not deceived by Eve or by Satan, but rather treacherously violated the covenant in full knowledge of all the fearful consequences as he chose sinful Eve to his holy Creator.
Eve was as much a descendent of Adam as you are. In other words the man, when created, was the whole race in potentiality, and every other human being, including Eve, was derived from him. A very important doctrine will be seen to be dependent upon this when we come to the next chapter, when we come to the fall of man. If Eve was a descendent of Adam, race responsibility did not rest upon her. Her sin might bring death to her, but only to herself, but Adam’s sin would bring it to all to be derived from him. —B. H. Carroll, An Interpretation of the English Bible, Vol. I, p. 84.
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NOTE: This particular paragraph (highlighted text) gives me pause for concern by speculating on what is NOT revealed in the Word of God. Otherwise I find it to be a good overview.Satan boldly denies the Word of God, for he inserted one of the smallest words in the Hebrew language, but it negated the whole warning “Ye shall NOT surely die.” And then to prove his point, he showed Eve that her assumption was erroneous. “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food...” How did she see this? Satan probably took a big bite of the forbidden fruit and let the juice run down his chin as he smacked his lips and enjoyed the fruit. And Eve’s erroneous reasoning that the fruit was only forbidden because of its possible deleterious effects on the body convinced her that God was mistaken. We commonly see people reasoning to equally wrong ideas as they endeavor to justify sex outside of marriage. They reason, “Well, in ancient times there was the danger of unwanted pregnancies and disease, so it was forbidden. But now, with modern protection these dangers are greatly alleviated, and so, it is alright to have sex any time and under any circumstances.” But all of God’s prohibitions test the individual whether he will obey God’s Word whether he fully understands it or not. And the possible bad effects are mostly irrelevant to the matter. It is always sin to disobey God’s Word, and there is no justification for it, however reason may suggest otherwise. But Satan’s temptation that worked on Eve, still works today as reason is made to off-set God’s clear commandments.
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